Four; federal fiscal years 1998-2001, had a federal surplus, per OMB figures: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFSD

But, through that entire period (almost every quarter, and definitely every year) the federal debt still increased: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEBTN

So, not really a demonstrated playbook to reduce the debt.

OTOH, for a longer period in the 1990 (starting about 1995), in the last half of the long and strong 1990s expansion, the arguably more important debt: GDP ratio was going down. The 2010s might have seen something similar -- it had roughly, though more noisily than in the 1990s, plateaud before the Trump tax cuts, and might have dropped even with similar spending patterns without them.

But, yeah, the secret there is largely strong economic expansion, though you can still screw it up on the fiscal policy side.